


Spin of the Storm

by picarats



Category: Alex Rider - Anthony Horowitz
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Book 1: Stormbreaker (Alex Rider), Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 06:20:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,088
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25089817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/picarats/pseuds/picarats
Summary: “John Crawley,” he said. “I represent the Royal & General Bank.”“I don’t bank with you,” Sabina said blankly. She didn’t know anyone who used the Royal & General at all — she’d never even heard of it. “I think there might have been some kind of a mix-up.”When her best friend Felix Lester is assassinated without any sign as to why, Sabina Pleasure finds herself thrust into a world of espionage, techno-terrorism — and, most importantly, one where she is never too young to die.(Canon-divergent AU of Stormbreaker.)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 16





	Spin of the Storm

**Author's Note:**

> *shows up twenty years too late to the Alex Rider fandom with Starbucks*
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own anything.

“Is it weird that I’m nervous?” Sabina’s partner asked, twirling the racket in his hand as he spoke. “What if it’s one of those life-defining events and I totally mess up?”

Bouncing the tennis ball on the green, Sabina shook her head.

“You’ll be fine _,”_ she assured him. “I mean, you won the competition. You have every right to be there, Felix. Just make sure you bring a mint when you meet Sayle.”

Felix Lester grinned. “Somehow, I don’t really think that’s a good gift for a billionaire,” he said. “What do you give the man who has everything? ‘ _Oh, a breath mint,’_ ” he said, mimicking a girly voice. “Cheers, Sab.”

“You’re mean.”

“I was only _teasing_ ,” said Felix. “I’m a super-genius with jokes, too.”

“I never said you were a ‘super-genius’,” Sabina shot out. “Just that you’re super-annoying. Must have gotten lost in translation in that big brain of yours.”

“Oh, that’s a good one,” he bantered back. “It’s like a compliment wrapped in an insult. Maybe we should be a double act.”

“Compliment —” Sabina pointed at herself with her racket — “Insult,” she finished, pointing at him. “Yeah, I can see that working out fine.”

“Just serve already, Pleasure,” Felix replied, a laugh audible in his voice. “My arm’s getting tired, and I don’t have an ice bath like Andy Murray to dunk it in.”

“You _wish_ you were Andy Murray, computer boy,” Sabina said, and served the ball.

Sabina and Felix spent most of their Saturdays together, playing a very rules-loose game of Singles at the local members-only tennis court. They’d started the tradition three years ago, when Sabina’s dad, a journalist — who had been reporting for a technology news programme at the time — had arranged an interview with Felix’s mum about her work in robotics. It had been a teacher-training day for the both of them, so they’d tagged along to the court and found themselves sitting next to the only other teenager there.

They couldn’t be more different on the outside. Sabina loved sport, all kinds, whilst Felix preferred the kind you played with a controller. Despite that, they had become fast friends.

The friendship had even survived the shallow relationship they’d had after Sabina’s friends had gotten boyfriends and Felix — well, Felix’s mates were all online, except, really, for Sabina, but they’d all seemed to be striking out too. They’d lasted a week.

Though they lived close together, they didn’t go to the same school: Felix was a day student at a posh, all-boys one five miles away and Sabina went to a renowned grammar school in the area. This meant that, on Saturdays, Sabina had someone to talk to that didn’t know about the events of the week. And Felix had someone to talk to, full-stop.

She was the only one he’d told about winning the Stormbreaker competition. The prize, the one he was nervous about, was to meet tech mogul Herod Sayle, creator of the round processor that was going to be implemented in the computers he was donating to secondary schools across the country. From what he’d told Sabina, she knew he’d be staying in Cornwall, a place she knew quite well from her holidays there every summer, getting the chance to tour the factory with Sayle at his side.

It was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity and, out of the hundreds of applicants, one of her best friends had won. Sabina couldn’t help but feel a bit proud.

“How was the south of France, anyway?” Felix asked, volleying the ball back. “You never told me.”

“ _France_ was Dad working,” Sabina replied. “He’s trying to get this scoop on Damien Cray — you know, the musician? — because apparently he’s trying to break into the video games industry or something. I spent most of it embarrassing myself with broken French and trying to learn how to surf. Mum was basically flirting with the instructor,” she added, making a face. “Just because Dad wasn’t giving her any notice. It was so embarrassing.”

Felix shrugged.

“Well, I’d rather have a French surfer for a dad than an accountant,” he said. “I mean, I wouldn’t swap my Dad for the world, but it’s a lot more of an exciting job, isn’t it?”

“You know, I don’t think he was even French,” Sabrina said. “He had the accent when he was talking to us, but every once in a while he’d get on the phone and he’d be speaking in, like, Russian. _And_ he had a Russian surname. He was weird. Nice, but… weird.”

He thought for a moment. “So I should seek him out the next time I go, then,” he said.

“Definitely,” Sabina said. She crowed victoriously as the ball she hit bounced out of the court. “Game point to Pleasure!”

“That wasn’t fair. You distracted me with thoughts of — Russian-French _surfers_.”

“Well, you brought it up.”

“Okay, true,” Felix immediately acquiesced. “You up for another game?”

Sabina looked at the clock behind Felix’s head.

“I better not,” she grimaced. “I’m expected for dinner. Dad’s making us something. He said he wants it to be a surprise, so… it’s definitely shepherd’s pie. You can come, if you want. He always makes too much.”

“Sounds nice,” Felix said. He picked up the tennis ball they’d been using. “Uh, I’m going to stay. Use the tennis ball machine, work on my swing.”

Sabina frowned. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine,” he said. “This whole meeting-Herod Sayle-thing’s got me in my head a bit. Need to work some things out.” He tilted his head. “And I also _do_ need to work on my backswing. It’s kind of awful.”

“I noticed,” Sabina said, then shrieked as Felix aimed the ball at her and missed by purpose. She chucked it back. “That’s terrible! You’re terrible, Lester!”

“Just a bit,” Felix said, catching the ball in one deft move. “I’m only giving as good as I get, though.”

“Ha,” Sabina said. She zipped up her bag with her racket inside, then swung it over her shoulder, grabbing her water bottle as she did. “See you next week?”

Felix nodded and waved her off, busy wrestling the tennis ball machine into place.

Sabina exited the outdoor tennis court and started to make her way back to the club building. It was a short walk, but quite lovely — the sun was out and the sky was clear, unlike what the rain had brought the previous day and the air was warm and comfortable. Her eyes were itching, though; they’d ran out of antihistamines that morning and hadn’t had time to pop out and get some more. It was the beginning of spring and it certainly felt like it.

She stepped through the door, walking into a dry-walled corridor. Sabina’s kit — the one with her day-clothes in, not the one with the sports equipment she was holding — was still in the changing room; she was on her way to pick it up before the bus ride back home.

Then Sabina accidentally bumped right into someone going the opposite way, dropping her bag on the floor as she jumped back. Her face went bright red. Did she really just —

“— I’m so, so sorry,” she said, embarrassed. She crouched on the floor, picking her bag back up. “I should have looked where I was going, I — Monsieur Gregorovich?”

Her surf instructor paused, having already dismissed her, and turned around.

“Sabina? Sabina Pleasure?”

She rose, bewildered. “Yes, it’s me. What are you doing here? Are you on holiday?”

“…I am,” Gregorovich confirmed, after a moment. He was holding a black, opaque tennis racket case under his arm, ostensibly covering a racket of his own. “Sometimes even people who live on holiday need one too,” he added.

 _But why here?_ Sabina wanted to say.

Instead, she said, “Do you have a friend that belongs to the club? I might know them.”

Gregorovich smiled. It was that same tired smile that told you absolutely nothing — he was humouring her, plain and simple.

“I do,” he said. “Yes, small world. It was nice seeing you again. Say hello to your mother for me.”

 _Eurgh. “_ Of course,” Sabina said, frowning, “but —”

“Goodbye, Sabina,” Gregorovich said, finally. He shot a look just past her shoulder and left.

Sabina watched him go, eyebrows furrowed. It truly was a small world — she’d just been talking to Felix about Monsieur Gregorovich, and now he was here? In almost-always-rainy England, for a _holiday?_ It definitely was a change of pace from the south of France, even if it was gorgeous outside.

She turned around to see what he’d been looking at before he went.

All that was in that corner of the wall behind her was a security camera, pointed toward the exit they’d been talking at. There was a red light in the corner, which meant that it was on. Sabina didn’t know very much about security cameras to propose any reason why Gregorovich had been looking at it.

She decided to put it out of her mind. Time was ticking on, and she didn’t have much time before the bus got to the stop.

It wasn’t until she had _boarded_ the bus that Sabina realised Gregovich’s accent had completely disappeared.

* * *

When Sabina got home, she was greeted by the sight of Liz Pleasure in the kitchen. This wasn’t entirely unprecedented — her parents tended to share the duties of the house, and that included the cooking — but her father had been talking about his ‘speciality Saturday dish’ all week and was absolutely nowhere to be seen.

“I thought Dad was cooking tonight,” Sabina said, by way of announcing her presence. She dropped her bag on the floor.

Her mother rolled her eyes as she put the potato masher to good use.

“He popped down from his conference call with the magazine, said he’d have to do tomorrow instead and a ‘ _please could you do it instead’,”_ she recalled. “I swear, if I didn’t love him to pieces…”

Sabina huffed, going to sit on one of the stools at the kitchen island. “Do you want any help?”

“No, I’m fine,” her mother said, finally turning to look at her. She blinked. “I thought you were going to change at the club?”

“Ran out of time before the bus came,” Sabina said, vaguely. “You’ll never guess who I bumped into, by the way. Do you remember when we went surfing in France? Yassen Gregorovich.”

Her mother, interested, half-turned as she continued preparing the food. “Really?”

“Yeah,” Sabina said. “Totally out of nowhere. He was at the club. Said he was someone’s plus-one. Here on holiday,” she added. “Apparently.”

Her mother tapped her painted fingernails on the kitchen top, musing. “I didn’t think you could be someone’s ‘plus-one’ to the club,” she said. “In fact, I _know_ you can’t. We had to shell out for a monthly membership when your father went to interview Mrs Lester. Of course, we kept paying after you loved it, but…”

It was Sabina’s turn to roll her eyes. “ _Mum,”_ she said, before pausing and thinking. “Wait, so he lied?”

“I didn’t say that,” her mother said. “Did he explicitly tell you he was with someone?”

Sabina replayed the conversation in her head. No, he hadn’t. She’d asked him if he knew anyone there, not if he was there with anyone. There was still something odd about the whole thing, but perhaps it would be best to keep that to herself. “No, I suppose not.”

“Right, then,” her mother said, dismissing the subject. “Dinner will be ready in a few, so if you take your kit off of my kitchen floor and go get your father, I — where are your shoes?”

At the non-sequitur, Sabina’s eyes widened. Her bag was too small for both her normal clothes and her shoes, so she usually carried them separately — her kit on her back, her sports gear in one hand and the pair of pumps she tended to wear out of school held with the other. She’d been so thrown by the appearance of Monsieur Gregovich that she’d forgotten them, only grabbing her bag from the changing room.

“I must’ve left them,” Sabina said, sighing. “I’m pretty sure that the buses are still running — it’s only a short while to get there, anyway —”

“It’s forty-five minutes, and the sun’s just about to start setting,” her mother interrupted. “Ask your dad to give you a lift.”

“What about dinner?” Sabina wanted to know. “I could just leave them there until next weekend. It wouldn’t be a bother.”

“You’re not doing that,” her mother said. “I’ll plate them up and cover them. You can reheat it when you get back. The club stays open late, anyway.”

Sabina shook her head. _Forget your jacket and have it be nicked once…_ She trudged upstairs and stepped into her father’s office.

“Dad?”

Her father looked up from his laptop. His glasses were at the very end of his nose, and his longer, greying hair — the only real reminder that he had been a hippie-type, before Sabina had even been a twinkle in his eye — was tied back in a ponytail not unlike her own. In fact, it appeared as if he’d borrowed one of her hair ties to do so.

“Hello, sweetheart,” he said, tilting his screen down a bit so he could see her better. “Dinner ready?”

“Not entirely,” Sabina hedged. She exhaled shortly. “I forgot my shoes at the tennis court and Mum said you’d give me a lift to go get them.”

“Fair enough,” her father said. “I always tend to agree with your mother, even when I don’t. Makes life easier. I’ll just finish this, and then I’ll be with you.”

Sabina, who knew that her father’s resolution of work would take ages, cleared her throat. “She said now,” she lied. “Like, right now.” It was only a little white lie, and it wasn’t as if it was entirely false. Sabina was fairly sure that if they didn’t leave now her mother would use the masher on them both.

Her father raised an eyebrow.

“I’ll get the keys if you get the coats, then?” he said.

“Deal,” Sabina said, and rushed downstairs. “We’ll be back soon!” she called out to her mother. “Soon-ish!”

“You’d better,” her mother said, as she slipped into her favourite puffer jacket. “Shepherd’s pie is much better cooked than microwaved.”

Sabina grinned. “So it _was_ shepherd’s pie, then?”

Her father paused halfway down the stairs, his brow furrowed. “What’s this about pie?”

“Nothing,” Sabina said, holding his raincoat out for him. “Nothing at all, Dad. Come on, let’s go, before it gets too dark.”

* * *

They drove down to the courts with the radio on, which was a nice change.

Her mother was usually the one to drive her to school and Sabina’s mum liked having classical on or nothing at all; anything with lyrics, in her eyes, was a ‘distraction to the driver’. She had repeatedly told Sabina that, over the years — and had backed it up with the argument that Sabina would understand when she was old enough to drive.

That lesson had, apparently, never reached her dad, who was _much_ older than her fifteen years and liked to start headbanging along to the music — whatever music it was — every time he reached a red traffic light.

The Pleasures’ car pulled onto the road outside of the club. Her father switched off the engine, and the lights in the car went off. The only ones that were left were the ones lighting up the street and inside the club itself. It was quite eerie, and if Sabina didn’t have a torch on her keyring — and a pair of shoes left in the changing rooms — she wouldn’t dare go.

But she did, so Sabina flashed a quick smile at her father before she unlocked the door and got out of the car.

Sabina wrapped her arms around herself as she approached the double doors that lead to the building’s reception. It was amazing how nearly two hours had changed things. Even though it wasn’t winter anymore, it had become cold and dark very quickly.

Summer had always been her favourite season. Sabina Pleasure was a day person, not a night owl, and the longer that day lasted the better.

The receptionist didn’t look up at her from the computer.

“We’re closing soon.”

“I left my shoes here,” Sabina said apologetically. “I’ll only be two minutes.”

Wordlessly, they handed her a key-card. Sabina took it from them, fumbled putting it in the door — earning a reproachful glare — and made her way through to the hallway.

She clicked on her torch as she stopped at the lockers outside of the changing room.

There they were: a pair of black slip-on pumps, in the square locker where she usually put them. Sabina’s own name was printed over the locker door, a piece of paper that had been slid into a plastic protector by the club’s employees. It was yellowed around the edges from where she’d slid it out and drawn flowers on it in sparkly gel pen two years ago. Sabina wasn’t exactly an artist, but the tiny doodle still held some charm.

Brushing off any invisible lint on her pumps, Sabina found herself looking at Felix’s own name-tagged locker. She couldn’t see in, but there was a weaved bag handle sticking out of the crack between the door and the side of the thing. Felix had a habit of doing that — accidentally trapping his sports kit in the door and not noticing until he went to go get it out.

Felix’s bag was still in his locker. That meant that he was still at the club.

He _had_ said to Sabina that he was wanting to practise, but it had been two hours since then. Felix was sensible. Sure, they joked around with each other, but that was because they were friends. With the sun setting earlier, she couldn’t imagine him staying at the court this late.

Something was amiss. Sabina could tell.

A strong gust of wind rattled the windows. Sabina twisted around to see where it had come from. There was a doorstop wedged underneath a door, keeping it from shutting entirely. It was the part of the hallway where she’d met Gregorovich — the exit to the outdoor tennis courts.

Her dad was waiting for her in the car, but that didn’t stop Sabina from kicking away the doorstop and going onto the outside green. She did spare a thought for him, but the fact of the matter was that he was probably busying himself drumming along to a song on the radio. She would only be a few minutes, and a few minutes wouldn’t mean anything anyway.

“Felix!” Sabina whispered fiercely, her hands cupped around her mouth. She stepped out further, trying to see if he was at all visible in the night. “ _Felix!”_

There was no answer to be heard.

“It’s Sabina. And this _isn’t_ funny,” she called out. “Felix?”

Silence, again. Maybe he wasn’t out there.

Sabina sighed. Deciding to retrace her steps back to the court where she’d last seen him, she focused her tiny travel torch on the concrete. It only gave her around a foot of visibility, but a foot was better than nothing. She didn’t want to trip and fall.

She shined it through the metal links in the fence.

The tennis ball machine was still standing in the middle of the court. Sabina winced at the blinding light — it bounced off of the machine’s metal frame — and aimed the torch elsewhere.

There was a figure on the other side of the court, sitting with their back to the net.

There was something off about them. They didn’t react as the light hit them; they were perfectly, unnaturally still. Their whole weight was on their arms, as if they were propping themselves up. She couldn’t see their face.

An icy sense of foreboding gnawed at Sabina’s bones.

“Hello?” she said, shaking the fence to get their attention. “Hello! Are you okay?” She exhaled sharply. “…Felix?”

The figure slumped over, falling to the side.

Their head hit the concrete. A sickening _crack_ echoed around the court.

Fingers curling into the chain links, Sabina pulled herself up and began to scale the fence. She’d been on climbing walls before, but they had holds; there wasn’t much of anything to put her feet on here. Her upper body strength was better than most — years of gymnastics paid off in that regard — so she quickly found herself dropping down onto the court.

Sabina braced herself. She brought the light onto the figure’s face.

It was Felix. There wasn’t any doubt about it.

His brown eyes were open, but it was like he was seeing right through her. The arms he had been using to keep himself upright were caked in blood. Sabina trailed the length of his prone body with the torchlight. His shirt — which had been white — was soaked in an angry, trailing red.

There were three welts in his body. Three holes in his shirt.

Even before Sabina reached for Felix’s pulse, she knew he was long gone.

* * *

“It’s just been so quiet,” Mrs Lester said, more to herself than Sabina. “It doesn’t feel real yet _.”_

Sabina nodded. She was silent, picking at the hem on the sleeve of her black dress. She didn’t meet Mrs Lester’s eyes. She was certain that the older woman wasn’t expecting her to give eye contact regardless. It wasn’t a conversation that needed it.

It was just over a week since the police had found her standing in shock over the body. The funeral, the one she’d just been to, had been a slow and quiet one — the opposite of Felix in life. It was a closed casket, but the thoughts swirling through Sabina’s head had served as reminder enough of what she’d found. What he’d looked like.

What had been _done_ to him.

The police weren’t any closer to a suspect. The last Sabina had heard, they were looking to write it off as a random shooting.

But that didn’t make sense to her. The only way someone could have done the act — killed him — was if they’d planned ahead. It was a members’ club. Not everyone could have gotten in, especially considering the probably conspicuous gun they would’ve needed to take in with them.

And Felix had been shot three times. That didn’t scream random.

Sabina kept these suspicions to herself. She didn’t think the police would appreciate her questions, especially since they were coming from her — a fifteen year old who was, she admitted, struggling with grief and wanting justice for her friend. She couldn’t tell her parents; they were already worried about her enough without adding a conspiracy into the mix.

Sabina definitely couldn’t tell Mr and Mrs Lester, either. The idea that someone would specifically target Felix was genuinely painful to think about. Adding that on top of losing their only son… it wasn’t right.

She didn’t even have an inkling of a reason why somebody would. He was _Felix._ He was an ordinary bloke, a regular teenager. It didn’t make sense.

Sabina was sitting in Felix’s room with his mother. The Lesters had asked her to come back with them after the service. Felix hadn’t written a will — he wasn’t old enough to even think about leaving one — so they wanted her to see if there was anything she wanted to keep of his as a memory. She’d said yes.

Her parents had said yes, too, but in Sabina’s opinion, they had no say in the matter. Felix was _her_ friend. Not theirs.

“I don’t think it’ll ever feel real,” Sabina replied, finally. “I mean, I saw him that afternoon. And now he’s just gone. It’s not something you accept right away. He’s not here, but… he is, if that makes sense.”

Mrs Lester nodded. “Yes,” she said. “It does. Very much.”

“I’ll — I’ll have a look,” Sabina said, looking around the room. “Thank you for this.”

“Of course,” Mrs Lester said, straightening her own dress as she stood. She paused at the door. “He loved you very much, you know. I think you were his best friend.”

Sabina smiled. It didn’t quite meet her eyes. “I think he was mine, too.”

The Lesters lived in an old converted church in Hampstead. Felix’s contribution to the renovation was the collection of posters that covered seemingly every inch of his bedroom walls. If a person wanted to know anything about Felix’s personality, Sabina thought, they’d be able to tell by what he had on them. Sabina’s favourite was the big, red Manchester United one in the middle of it all that was almost as tall as she was. Their shared support of the team was what had got them talking in the first place, when they’d met.

The posters looked more tired than normal. Sabina wondered what the Lesters were going to do with the room now.

Felix’s bookshelf was full of the usual suspects — set texts from English, revision guides, teen action novels and a row of Guinness World Record books spanning the last five years. Running her finger over their spines, Sabina stopped when she came to a very familiar book. It was a book about different codes and ciphers, spy stuff, one she’d been no stranger to seeing Felix pour over when arriving at the court.

She pulled the book out.

A piece of paper fluttered to the floor. It was torn at the edges, half of a ruled page that had probably been ripped from a notebook. A set of numbers were scrawled in the middle in blue biro: ‘ _14-20-25-20-4’_.

The note was in Felix’s handwriting.

“Sabina?”

Sabina quickly put the piece of paper in the book, shutting it. “Yes?”

“I’m sorry to rush you,” said Mrs Lester, “but Felix’s grandparents are coming over soon. Have you found anything?”

“Yes,” she said. Sabina wrapped her arms around the computer science textbook, holding it close to her chest. She gestured down to it with a nod of her head, thinking of the note inside. “I think I just have.”

* * *

School was depressingly normal. It _felt_ abnormal going from home — and the Lesters, and her own thoughts — to where no-one had heard or was talking about Felix at all. It made sense; he hadn’t gone there, and Sabina was fairly sure that he’d only known about the people she went to school with through her talking about them.

And now Sabina was sitting in English, twiddling her thumbs. They were watching a documentary about the Globe Theatre as part of their upcoming GCSEs. It was apparent that neither the teacher or the other students were very interested in the programme at all. There was a group of boys sitting behind her that had busied themselves by starting up a game of cards instead of paying attention.

She almost wanted to ask about joining. It looked like they were having a lot more fun than she was.

Sabina didn’t particularly like English, much to her journalist father’s chagrin — her favourite subject was History, though, and the two tended to overlap to the point where she did fairly well in it anyway. _History_ was the kind of subject that excited her, trying to pick apart events that had really happened from different perspectives, puzzling together different things to figure out what might have incited what.

It had become her favourite last year, on a school trip. They had been learning about the Second World War that term, and one of the topics they’d covered had been about the code-breakers that had worked at Bletchley Park. It had been surreal, seeing where people like Alan Turing had worked — cracking wartime messages with some of the first proper computers.

And now they had things like the Stormbreakers.

But all the things that had happened in History had happened in the past. What was happening now didn’t have a textbook attached, just a set of numbers Sabina had committed to memory and kept in the book she’d found them in just in case. It was up to her — and her alone — to figure out the sequence’s meaning.

And whether it meant anything at all.

Propping her chin on top of her fist, Sabina looked out of the window next to her desk.

The movement of the cars outside was glacial. Since it was the middle of the school day, it was unlikely that any of the cars that were parked in front of the school were going to join those on the road; they were mostly the teachers’ cars, the kind that remained stagnant throughout the day with their owners being busy dealing with teenagers like Sabina and the boys behind her.

Motion. A black car stopped at the school gates, windows tinted.

Sabina tilted her head, trying to get a better look at the driver. All that she could see was their hand producing something to the staff on duty — a passport for ID, judging by the colour — before they rolled their window back up and continued out of view.

The documentary had moved on to talking about the Globe’s first productions when Mrs Ford, one of the school’s secretaries, stuck her head through the door.

“Sabina Pleasure?”

Lost at whatever she was being summoned for, Sabina stood.

The boys in the back of the class tittered as she left the classroom. “Ooh, Sabina’s in trouble,” one of them sang. Sabina shot the group a dirty look. Maybe it was for the best that she never asked to buy in.

“Don’t worry,” Mrs Ford said, as they walked to the headteacher’s office together. “They don’t know what they’re talking about. You’re not in trouble at all.”

Sabina wondered why she was going in the first place, then.

She found her answer in the man that rose to shake her hand as she entered the room.

He was a perfectly unremarkable man, from the polyester medium grey suit he wore to the polyester medium brown tie in a half-windsor knot around his neck. He was the sort of man you wouldn’t look twice at on the street, seeing as though looking once was pushing it.

“I’ll leave you two to it,” said the headteacher. Sabina wasn’t overly familiar with the man — she wasn’t the kind of teenager that got into the kind of exploits involving a trip to his office — but now that she was alone with the stranger, she found herself wanting him to stay.

The man in grey nodded politely at her as she sat.

“John Crawley,” he said. “I represent the Royal & General Bank.”

“I don’t bank with you,” Sabina said blankly. She didn’t know anyone who used the Royal & General at all — she’d never even heard of it. “I think there might have been some kind of a mix-up.”

“No mix-up, Sabina, I assure you,” Mr Crawley said. “Herod Sayle is one of our clients. He ran a competition, one your friend Felix won. I am so sorry for your loss. I wanted to ask you a few questions about him.”

The platitude and sudden turn in conversation made Sabina feel uneasy. “Why isn’t Sayle doing this himself? Why ask a _bank_ to do it?”

Mr Crawley looked slightly like he’d just sucked on a lemon.

“Mr Sayle is indisposed at the minute, and the Royal & General are entrusted with handling his affairs, particularly when they involve the finance of the company,” he said, by way of explanation. “The competition Sayle ran — for the first child to use the Stormbreaker computer — was quite a large expense.”

“And you want to make sure that money wasn’t wasted,” Sabina said. It came out harsher than expected, though she couldn’t find it in herself to regret the tone. “Ask away.”

Mr Crawley clicked his pen, opening a binder he had set next to his chair. He pulled a pair of brown rectangle glasses out that matched his tie. “Did Felix have any siblings?”

“What?” Sabina, thrown, asked. “No, none. You could have asked his parents that.”

He ticked something on his paper. “Did he ever talk with you about the competition?”

“Only that he was feeling a bit anxious about it,” Sabina answered. “On meeting Sayle, mostly.”

“That was all?”

Sabina tried to remember. “Yes,” she said. “That’s all I can remember him saying.”

“Do you remember if he told anybody else about it?”

“No,” Sabina said. “I mean, yes. Apart from his family, no-one other than me knew. He didn’t think anyone else would believe him. He was like that.”

“His death,” Mr Crawley ventured. Sabina froze. “You were the one to find him, were you not?”

“I was,” Sabina said, after a moment. “I’m sorry, how is this relevant?”

He looked up at her through his glasses. “Due procedure, I’m afraid. They’re questions for Insurance,” he said. “How did he die?”

“He was shot.”

“How many times?”

“I’m sure if you ask the police they’ll tell you.”

“How many times, Sabina?”

“ _Three,”_ she nearly spat. The decision of uncurling her hands from where she had been holding the arms of the chair was made consciously. “Is that everything? I don’t think I want to talk to you anymore.”

Mr Crawley shut his folder with a soft click.

“That being so,” he said, “I should like to arrange a meeting at the Bank with you soon to go over some follow-up questions. Today, after school. If you’re free, of course?”

Sabina couldn’t think of anything she’d like less at that moment. But it was the one day of the week she had nothing on, and if it was for Felix…

“I’m free,” she said. “What’s the address?”

To his credit, Mr Crawley didn’t look affronted that she hadn’t heard of his bank. He produced a pristine business card from the same pocket that his glasses had been in.

“On the back,” he said.

Sabina flipped it over. ‘ _John Crawley — Personnel’,_ it said, in a serif font _._ There was a phone number under it and an address in Vauxhall. “I’ll be there.”

“I won’t keep you any longer, then,” Mr Crawley said, opening the door for her.

Now she knew there was something that she liked the idea of doing less, Sabina thought: having to sit through the rest of that documentary. She resisted a sigh as she made her way back to class.

* * *

Waiting for Mr Crawley, Sabina couldn’t help but think that the sofas in the bank’s reception had been designed to be as uncomfortable as possible.

She was currently perched on a leather, backless ottoman, the stuffing of which seemed to be made out of plywood. The walls were an inoffensive beige; Sabina found herself trying to look for shapes of damp within the plain colours to combat her boredom. Unfortunately for her, it seemed like the Royal & General had spent their soft furnishings budget on making sure the building itself was perfectly serviceable.

According to the clocks above the desk, which were all set to different hours, she’d been sat for thirty minutes. It felt like an age. Very few people had come through the bank’s doors. No-one had joined her in the waiting area: they’d all either walked straight through or been turned around at the desk. It made for abysmal people-watching.

To cut it short, Sabina was bored out of her mind.

Perhaps she would be able to steal some sugar sachets.

“Sabina,” Mr Crawley said, appearing suddenly in front of her. He’d changed his tie, looking quite hurried. Sabina almost felt sorry for him. “I apologise for the wait. If you’ll follow me?”

She ignored the proffered arm — it wasn’t the eighteen-hundreds, and Mr Crawley seemed to have only offered it as part of some obscure set of manners — and stood up, following him to a set of lifts. There was no-one else in there, as they climbed the floors of the building: the silence was palpable.

Sabina was inclined to keep it that way. She didn’t particularly like Mr Crawley.

The fifteenth floor of the Royal & General Bank had, at least, a bit more character than the ground floor. The walls were a stark white, decorated only — and thankfully, as a sight for sore eyes — with some paintings of abstract shapes that sort of reminded her of the images she’d seen of Rorschach tests, the ones you’d squint at and see butterflies or babies or dead bodies in. It was oddly comforting in a way, seeing now that there had been _some_ thought in the design of the place, even though it was a slightly confusing addition.

They stopped at one of the office doors.

“In here,” Mr Crawley said.

“This isn’t your office,” Sabina replied, because she was pretty sure Mr Crawley’s name wasn’t ‘ _Ian Rider’_. She had the business card to prove it. “What’s going on?”

Mr Crawley looked pained.

“My own office is… unavailable, at the moment,” he said. He seemed a bit embarrassed. Sabina wondered if it had anything to do with the reason he’d changed his tie. “The person that normally works in here has been kind enough to lend the firm his for the purpose of this meeting.”

“Oh,” Sabina said, nonplussed. “Alright, then.”

There were already two people in the room. The closest to Sabina was a woman in her thirties, her hair scraped back into a tight bun. She looked up at Sabina, gesturing for her to sit down. The man next to her did not, busy looking at something on his computer.

Sabina subsequently went straight past deliberate disaffection and hurtled right into being violently annoyed. This clearly wasn’t just any ‘meeting at the bank’. She understood that Sayle was a famous man, but this was getting pretty ridiculous.

She sat down anyway. If there was one thing she’d learned as a Pleasure, it was how to play a situation to her advantage.

“Lock the door, Crawley,” said the man, impassively, still not looking up. “We may be a while.”

Sabina spluttered, her head whipping around to look at the banker. She stood hastily. “Hang on a minute —”

Mr Crawley locked the door, ignoring her completely.

She glared at him, outraged. He avoided her look. _Good,_ Sabina thought.

“Sabina,” said the woman, trying to save face. “Please sit down.”

“Not until you tell me what the bloody _hell_ is going on!” Sabina burst out. Perhaps she’d lied about the whole being-able-to-play-a-situation-to-her-advantage thing, but it was pretty deserved at that point.

The woman exhaled sharply. Her breath smelled like peppermint. “Sabina —”

“I discover my best friend’s _body_ and this man comes to my school asking invasive questions about it. _Fine,_ I think, _that’s fine_. Probably trying to cover all bases, liability-wise. Maybe soothe his client’s ego. Then he invites me to his place of work for a meeting with only a couple of hours notice. And yeah, I’m not an adult yet, so I go along with it, because, apparently, I don’t know any better. That’s my own fault. But there’s something not right here, and you’re going to tell me what it is, because if I have to go through this _farce_ any longer I might just throw this chair you’re asking me to sit on out of that window!”

“Bullet resistant,” said the man.

“I —” Sabina paused, thrown. “What?”

“The window’s bullet resistant,” the man repeated, leaning forward to turn off his computer’s monitor. “A chair wouldn’t break it. It’s half an inch thick. Now,” he said, “sit _down,_ Sabina.”

Sabina sat down.

Now that she was looking at him, the man was less like a man and more like a wax-work model of someone from a black-and-white film. He was completely grey, as if someone had pulled out a straw and sucked all of the colour away. The whites of his eyes, even, behind his glasses, seemed to be a shade of light gray — or glass picked up off a beach, maybe, worn away through time and erosion into two empty, colourless circles.

“My name is Alan Blunt,” said the man. “I am the chairman of the Royal & General Bank; this is my colleague, Mrs Jones.”

Mrs Jones steepled her fingers on her lap. “You must be feeling very tired,” she said, seeming to be observing her carefully. Sabina supposed that she _had_ just exploded like a bomb. It was probably deserved. “Losing a friend is a terrible thing.”

“Like you care,” Sabina said. “You just want to soothe your client, Sayle. How much did he pay you to handle his affairs, again?”

“Herod Sayle does not bank with us,” Blunt said. “In fact, like you, I doubt he’s ever heard of the Royal & General.”

Sabina blinked.

“You’ve lost me,” she said. “Who do you represent, then?”

Blunt picked a photo frame up from the desk. “This man,” he said, turning it around and passing it to her. “This is Ian Rider.”

The picture inside was that of a man and a younger boy — probably his son — against a tropical backdrop, sitting around a café table. Both were grinning at the camera, the blue sea behind them the most colourful thing Sabina had seen since entering the Royal & General Bank. There was a second, smaller picture nestled between the glass and the frame, a school photo of the same boy, looking much younger.

Sabina tapped the glass lightly. “Who’s the boy?”

“His nephew,” Blunt said, “Alex. He’s about your age, maybe a bit younger. His parents passed away when he was young; Ian’s all that he has left. He looks rather like your late friend, don’t you think?”

Even if Alex Rider did, with his fair hair and brown eyes, Sabina decided to ignore that last comment. “Why are you telling me this?”

“I’m sure you might have guessed,” he said. “The Royal & General Bank is a front. Nothing more than an elaborate cover. I told you the truth about my name — and Mrs Jones is a fellow employee. But I am the Chief Executive Officer of the Special Operations Division of the Secret Intelligence Service, not a banker.”

… _What._

“Prove it.”

“Mrs Jones?”

Mrs Jones opened a drawer in Ian Rider’s desk. She took out a file and put it on the desk carefully. It was marked with a single word: STORMBREAKER.

“This is the last mission that Agent Rider was working on,” she said. “We sent him to the Sayle plant posing as a security guard. I’m sure you’re aware of Herod Sayle’s history.”

Born in the Lebanon, adopted out, schoolmate of the Prime Minister and about to give every secondary school in Britain a Stormbreaker computer… Sabina knew the story off by heart, given how many times Felix had gone on about it.

She nodded. “I’m sure there’s something else if you apparently sent an agent over.”

“Ian’s been there for two weeks,” Mr Crawley said. Sabina jumped. She’d forgotten the man she’d so disliked was still in the room. “He started sending us messages in his reports that something wasn’t quite up to scratch. He said that Sayle’s security down in Cornwall at the factory was more like a private army. We told him to go dark and look into it further. We’ve heard nothing since.”

The same gnawing pit she’d encountered at the tennis courts opened up again in her stomach. “What does this have to do with Felix?”

“Your friend Felix,” Blunt said, “was remarkably talented in getting into places in cyber-space he didn’t quite belong. When he won the competition — completely of his own accord, if that is any testament to his character — he did exactly what we ended up doing and checked out the place himself. We caught him, but we decided to follow his work instead of confronting him outright. It’s apparent that Felix discovered some data that concerned him so much that he disclosed his worry, but not said information, to some other young chaps during a —” Blunt looked at Mrs Jones.

“ _Halo_ match, sir,” Mrs Jones said. “The game is due to be released in November, but it seems Felix and his online friends won a competition. Another one, I mean.”

Sabina’s head was swimming. “Sayle found out,” she completed, feeling numb. “He had him killed.”

“It’s possible,” Blunt said. “There’s also the notion that, like the police have indicated, Felix was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. All that stands between you and knowing which of these are true is a favour.”

“A favour,” Sabina repeated.

“On the 29th of March,” Mrs Jones said, “Mr Sayle is expecting a no-show at Port Tallon. We propose sending his sister instead. That’s you, Sabina. Now, we don’t need you to be a spy — simply a presence where Sayle thought he wouldn’t have one. An added stressor, in case he really is up to no good. Agent Rider will be there to handle what we need doing. You’ll be there until the first of next month — that’s four days — which is when the Stormbreaker computers will be unveiled.”

“Felix doesn’t have a sister,” Sabina said.

“Mr Sayle doesn’t know that.”

Sabina shook her head. “And if I say I don’t believe you? If I go on thinking that you’re all playing the Royal & General Bank equivalent of a bad student prank?”

“That would be your choice, Sabina,” Blunt said. “Although, the Bank _would_ be obliged to report our concern over the recent anti-social behaviour you showed in the meeting you had with Mr Crawley. It’s a shame, really — of course, a level of post-traumatic stress is to be expected after discovering your friend like that — but, in retrospect,” he paused, lifting up a gunmetal tape recorder from an out-of-view place, “saying on record that you would ‘throw a chair through a window’ was the extreme that tipped us off.”

Sabina wanted to kick her past self _hard_. “You’re blackmailing me.”

“There’s a lovely care and rehabilitation center near here that we could send you to,” Blunt continued. “Of course, school would be out of the question. Your GCSEs and your university career too, now that I think of it. Your parents will be disappointed, of course. They’ll probably never get to see you again, seeing as though you’ll need that constant support they can never give. As for themselves, your father may find it a bit difficult to leave the country. His passport might get a bit mixed-up. Now, that would be a shame — he’s writing that book, isn’t he? On Damien Cray? I’d imagine he’d need to travel for that. And for the rest of his career.”

They’d been manipulating her from the start. The complete and utter blankness of the place setting her on edge; the questions and answers designed to provoke; the Rorschach test-looking art. Even Mr Crawley’s new tie and faked embarrassment reeked of being a part of a big old set-up.

Blunt had been looking at a monitor when she’d walked in. Had he been watching her?

Sabina swallowed. “What are you going to tell my parents?”

“I’m sure we’ll be able to come up with something,” Blunt said. “We’re quite creative, as you just saw. All right, Sabina. What do you say?”

Sabina looked down again at the photo frame on her lap. This was part of Blunt’s manipulations, too — but it was true. She couldn’t help seeing Felix in Alex’s face, in the danger Agent Rider was in. This was what Felix had died for — Herod Sayle and whatever was going on with the Stormbreaker computer.

And they didn’t know who’d killed him, she’d realised. Mr Blunt would have used it to push her into working for them if they did. She’d seen that already.

If Sabina got close enough, maybe she’d be able to find out.

She cleared her throat. “I think I’d like to see what’s in that file.”

Blunt didn’t smile, but Sabina got the feeling he’d been expecting that response. “Of course.”

As Mrs Jones passed the file over, Sabina surreptitiously slid the small school photo of Alex Rider under her watch and hid it with her school blazer. It was a small victory, selfish and sneaky — but she knew that, if she were in Ian Rider’s place, she’d want a bit of home with her. Maybe Sabina would be able to give it to him.

And it helped to know she knew something Blunt didn’t.

Four days. Sabina could survive four days with Herod Sayle.

Right?

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! Be sure to leave a comment if you feel so inclined.


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